


The Electrified Third Rail

by EmeraldAshes



Series: Dorks in D.C. [1]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: College AU, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Protective Connor, Social Anxiety, Subways, Suicidal Thoughts, Washington D.C.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-18 02:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11282028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmeraldAshes/pseuds/EmeraldAshes
Summary: Evan lurches down the escalator. He careens towards the train doors with his bag swinging behind him. He’s there. He can make it. The doors shut in his face. Jared is watching through the window, mouth hanging open, and then he’s gone as the train zooms away.Evan Hansen is alone in a metro station in Washington D.C. At least until Connor Murphy shows up.





	The Electrified Third Rail

The light isn’t turning green, and the turnstile isn’t opening, even though Evan is sure he put money on his card. He’s sure, totally sure, and—

“We can make it!” Jared cries as he scrambles through the gate next to Evan’s.

Evan shuffles over to that one instead, but the light is still shining red. The little screen reads “See station manager.”

There’s only one minute until the train arrives. One minute. Evan shouts at Jared’s back, “W-wait, I…I’m still…”

Evan trips but manages to keep on his feet as he sprints over to the woman in the booth. She looks angry, or maybe tired, but probably angry, as she presses a button and waves him through. He wants to say sorry, but he needs to save his breath because the sign says that the train is boarding now, and Jared’s at the bottom of the escalator. He thinks Alana and Zoe are already inside, probably not even noticing he isn’t with them.

Evan lurches down the escalator. He careens toward the train doors with his bag swinging behind him. He’s there. He can make it.

The doors shut in his face.

Jared is watching through the window, mouth hanging open, and then he’s gone as the train zooms away.

Evan Hansen is alone in a metro station in Washington D.C.

He shouldn’t be surprised, really, because he knew this would happen. Well, not this specifically. But something like this.

That’s why he hadn’t had a beer, earlier, because he knew that he would have to take care of himself if anything happened. He knew that Jared was his roommate, not his friend, and that Alanna and Zoe were Jared’s friends, and they wouldn’t watch out for stupid Evan Hansen on a stupid train platform in stupid D.C.

Evan hates it here. He shouldn’t be here. But his father went to this fancy Washington D.C. university, which made Evan a legacy student (some legacy, he thought bitterly), and the scholarship they offered was too good. His mom had seemed so happy that Evan could go to college. She had said that things would be different in college, that everyone would be looking to make friends because nobody knew anybody.

His mom wasn’t wrong, but just because people were looking for new friends didn’t mean they wanted to be friends with a freak like him. Jared had shut down that idea right away. Zoe had seemed like might become his friend until she met Alanna and became totally consumed by love. Alanna talks at him sometimes, but he’s heard her have similarly dynamic conversations while talking aloud to herself.

Still, Evan wanted so badly for things to be okay, for them to be real friends. When Alanna gave him a pity invitation to her acquaintance’s party, he had gone with them. He then spent the whole night in a corner with a can of Coke and a dying phone, occasionally pretending to text someone.

Oh God. Evan whimpers, scrabbling at his pockets. He almost drops the phone down the tracks. And if he had dropped it, he would be in the middle of D.C., waiting for a train that wouldn’t be here for 15 minutes, with no way to contact anyone. But he catches it. He catches it. His phone is at 5%, which is low enough that he definitely shouldn’t use it.

He is totally alone on his side of the tracks, but what if some weird guy shows up and is clearly unhinged and probably a serial killer? What if someone tries to mug him? A lot of people got mugged in the city at night; that’s why you’re supposed to go out in groups. Which he did.

It doesn’t help that it’s the metro where this is happening. The metro with its perpetual underground gloom. The metro where the trains thunder in with amazing speed, so close to the crowds of people tensed to shove their way inside. Sometimes Evan thinks about this video he saw once of a woman being shoved in front of the train, just a push and a scream. He thinks about stepping forward at just the right moment. He thinks about the impact.

Evan wants to brush it off as an intrusive thought, like when you’re holding something delicate and consider crushing it but you don’t really want to crush it.

It’s not like that, though. The thought of stepping in front of the train is weirdly alluring. And he remembers what happened in senior year, with the tree. And he told himself that he wouldn’t do it again, that he cared too much about making his mom proud and finding something better for himself.

That’s what they always say, right? Don’t give up hope. It gets better.

But there isn’t anything better because no matter where Evan goes, he’s still stuck being himself.

Someone just came down the elevator. Evan is trying to get his breathing under control, trying to look like a perfectly ordinary person and not a pathetic loser who just got left on the side of the train tracks by people who didn’t even pity him enough to pretend to be his friends for one night.

The guy has hair curling down to his shoulders, he’s got a tattoo peeking out of his sleeve, and his clothes are all dark. He’s attractive, too. That’s just great. 

He’s looking at Evan, which would already be sort of embarrassing because Evan has been looking at him, too. But he is really looking at Evan. Like legitimately concerned, eyes wide.

Suddenly, Evan realizes that he is the weird dude at the station who is probably a serial killer. He immediately looks away from the new guy, trying not to impose his creepiness on the poor man.

And suddenly it hits him.

Evan waits for a train. He goes to college. He meets new people. He goes to therapy. No matter what he does, he messes it up. Every time.

He’s wheezing, now, sucking in useless whistles of air because EVAN HANSEN CAN’T EVEN BREATHE RIGHT.

So maybe he should stop.

Then, Evan is yanked back. He stumbles a few feet away from the gaping hole with an electrified track at the bottom. When he turns, confused, the guy from earlier is glaring at him, one hand clutching Evan’s backpack.

Evan opens his mouth, then closes it, then tries again. “Wh…Why did…?”

“You looked like you were gonna pass out, and I wasn’t gonna dive into the tracks to save you,” the guy says. “With my luck, I’d get hit by the train and be one of those poor assholes who lives.”

“Lives?” Evan squeaks.

“Yeah, sometimes someone jumps in front of a train and survives, which is pretty fucked up. I’d love to hear that conversation, though. ‘Well, sir, you’re a quadriplegic with no face. Still want to kill yourself?’”

Evan is still not doing great with this whole breathing thing.

He crosses his tattooed arms, scowling. “What? Are you squeamish or something?”

Evan shrugs, smiling weakly.

The guy snorts. “I tried to get your attention before I grabbed you, but you were pretty out of it. What the fuck are you on right now?”

“N-nothing?” That shouldn’t have been a question. Why, oh why did it have to come out as a question?

The guy rolls his eyes. “You’re a tourist, aren’t you?”

“Sort of? I mean, I live here, I go to college here, but I only started a c-couple weeks ago.”

The guy pats him on the head, and Evan is incredibly uncomfortable with that on like three different levels. “A tourist and a freshman. Talk to me in a year when you’re a seasoned sophomore.”

Evan holds out his hand, forcing a twitchy probably-a-serial-killer smile onto his face. “Yeah. Um. Sure. Thanks for, well, for helping. My name’s Evan Hansen.”

The other teen eyes his hand with suspicion, and Evan has clearly read the situation wrong, and—

He takes Evan’s hand. “Connor.”

“Connor. That’s um, that’s cool.”

“What’s cool?”

“Your name?” Evan wonders if it’s too late to jump onto the train tracks.

It’s quiet, then, for a long, long two minutes. Evan would be okay with that, would really be fine with this interaction ending. But his phone is at 5%, so he can’t exactly pretend to be busy. He’s still holding his metro card, though, so he flips it over and thinks about reading it. But what sort of loser reads the back of his metro card? And then Evan is just anxiously bending it and praying that it doesn’t snap in half.

Connor could totally pretend to be busy. He’s holding his phone, but he also keeps looking at Evan like maybe he’s expecting Evan to say something. Evan starts frantically trying to come up with a topic. Connor is wearing a band T-shirt, but Evan doesn’t know the band. He paints his nails, that’s kind of cool, but would it be weird to bring that up?

Finally, it’s way too much, and Evan shouts, “Your pin!”

Connor jerks up and scowls. “What about it?”

Evan gestures at the little rainbow pin cheerfully shining against Connor’s black backpack. “It’s, uh, from the Pride Parade. Right? My friend, acquaintance really, Alana, she has one, too. She’s into, y’know…”

“Women?” Connor crosses his arms, leaning against a pillar that’s as wide as three of him.

“No! Well, yes, she is, but I wasn’t going to”—Evan takes a deep breath—“Activism. She likes activism.”

“Go her. I’m just gay.” Connor says it with an edge in his voice, like he’s ready for this to turn into a fight. Not even an argument kind of fight. Connor seems like the kind of guy who carries a knife.

Along with a small spike of fear, Evan wonders how horribly other people have reacted that Connor is so on edge. He tries to steer the conversation to safer waters. “What’s it like?”

“Sucking dick?”

Evan can feel his face heating up, and he prays that his skin isn’t doing that thing where redness creeps up his chest and consumes his head, and it probably is. Oh God. He says, “The Pride Parade! I meant the parade.”

“Costumes. Drag queens. People throwing beads. Everyone’s really pretty cool, I guess. It’s still a long-ass parade, though. Like two hours longer than it needs to be. You should go next year, if you’re interested.”

Evan plunks himself down on a flat, stone bench beside the pillar and starts to fiddle with his metro card again. “No, I don’t know. Like, what do you even wear to a Pride Parade?”

“Whatever the fuck you want.” Connor gestures with a hand, long curls falling in front of his face. 

Doesn’t that bother him? It would bother Evan, if it were his face, and it sort of bothers him even with it being Connor’s. Like, the hair is sort of hiding it, which is a shame…he should stop thinking about Connor’s face. Now.

Evan peers up at Connor, who’s leaning against the side of the bench instead of sitting on it. “I just, I would feel like, like maybe I’m intruding.”

Connor snorts. “Just don’t go around shouting that our homosexual lust is stirring up tornadoes, and you’ll be fine. Plenty of straight people go to Pride.”

“Oh no, I’m not straight.” That was the weirdest sort-of coming out ever, and Connor’s definitely gonna laugh at him.

Instead, Connor grins, which Evan is pretty sure means he’s suppressing the laughter. So he’s a good person, probably.

“I’m bisexual,” Evan adds because it wouldn’t be something Connor would guess, he didn’t think. Hell, Jared thinks Evan’s gay, and Evan hasn’t even said anything to him yet…or ever.

“Then you should totally go to Pride. Paint your chest pink and blue or something.”

Evan leans against the bench’s cool back, staring up at the honeycombed stone ceiling so far above him. It’s weird to think how deep underground they are. “I just…It’s different, isn’t it? I mean, I like girls, and I could marry a girl. And no one would ever ask if I liked guys or even think about it. But actual gay people, they can’t do that, not really.”

“So you’re just gonna fucking hide?”—Connor glares at him—“What if you meet some hot guy? Maybe he wants your number. You just gonna walk away from that and pretend it didn’t happen?”

“No, of course not. I”—Evan makes a pained noise—“It just feels different, like I don’t really belong, like I don’t deserve to be proud of liking guys or girls or anyone because no one’s ever discriminated against me or whatever, so it’s not really worth paying attention to.”

Connor groans, leaning his head back so that his hair brushes against Evan’s shoulder. Evan shivers, thinking about moving away. But he doesn’t.

“Dude, I don’t stop being gay because I’m single. And you don’t stop being bi just because you’re not out yet, or because you’re banging a chick.”

Evan shrugs and glances at his phone. It’s on silent, he notices, and he has several texts.

The text from Jared reads, “I honestly thought you were gonna make it, lol.”

There’s a few from Alana, detailing that the three of them would get off at the next station and get on the following train, the one he would of course catch. Simply try to get on approximately the same car as they did earlier.

Evan wants to write that he would try, of course, but he didn’t get a great sense of that while he was FALLING DOWN THE ESCALATOR. Instead, because he’s a coward, he types “k.”

There’s a text from his mom, too, from around the time they had all left to go to the metro station, asking if he had taken his medicine. 

“I feel super awkward taking them around my roommate, and I’m not that sneaky, so no” seems like a lot for a text, or for an explanation. But he doesn’t want to lie to his mom, so he just shoves the phone back in his pocket. 

Connor is watching him again, and Evan is starting to think that there must be something seriously wrong with his face if it’s that entertaining to peer at. Evan has always suspected that he had a weird face.

“Damn, you’re popular tonight.”

“Yeah, n-not really. My fr…the people I was out with tonight, they sort of needed to get in touch with me? Because, well, actually, it’s kind of a funny story.”

Connor slides onto the bench beside him, which is kind of uncomfortable because there isn’t that much room on that side, and Connor is really good-looking and, like, their legs are touching? But Connor doesn’t seem to think it’s weird. Evan isn’t going to make it weird.

Evan says, “Y’see, I got caught up at the turnstile for a while because my card wasn’t working. And they all ran ahead because the train was there. I managed to come through after them, and I’m falling down the escalator. They’re all in the train, and I’m right there, sure I can make it.”

Evan is starting to realize that this story isn’t funny at all, but he’s sort of committed to the joke, so he starts to giggle uncomfortably. “And then the door slams in my face, and the train leaves.”

Connor isn’t laughing. “That has got to be the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know, right?”—Evan needs to stop laughing, but he really, really can’t—“but, uh, my one friend. He was standing right at the window, and the expression on his face was kind of great?”

“Your friends are dicks,” Connor says.

Evan shrugs, his voice trailing off. “They’re, um, not really my friends.”

“Good,” Connor says as the train pulls in, “because they’re dicks.”

He follows Connor into the car, which is maybe sort of pathetic. What if Connor doesn’t want annoying Evan Hansen following him around? But Connor sits next to him, so maybe it was okay.

They talk. Connor goes to an arts college. His father’s a congressman, and he’s got a younger sister in town who he clearly doesn’t like. He knows a really good shawarma place near where Evan goes to school, which Evan should try sometime. Evan has no idea what shawarma is and tries to remember to look it up later.

Overall, it’s a pretty good conversation.

And then it’s Evan’s stop. He gives a little wave and steps off.

Jared immediately invades his personal space. “Dude! We thought you were dead or something.”

Evan tries to be cool and brush aside the whole embarrassing incident. “I’m fine. It wasn’t a big deal really, or at all…really.”

“Getting on the train without you there was inconsiderate of us,” Alana says.

“It’s okay.”

Zoe’s blue eyes are on him, but her fingers are languidly playing with Alana’s hair like she doesn’t even notice she’s doing it. “It’s totally not okay. Sorry, Evan.”

“Why am I not at all surprised that you’re part of this?” Connor’s tone is sarcastic. Evan hadn’t realized that Connor had gotten off, too, and he feels a little burst of happiness that his new acquaintance isn’t gone yet.

“Oh, fuck you, Connor.” Zoe’s musical voice has morphed into something tight and mean.

“Don’t be a bitch, Zoe,” Connor spits back.

“You make me a bitch”—Zoe jabs her finger at him—“You got off just to bother me. This isn’t even your stop!”

“Not everything is about you,” Connor says.

Then, he turns to Evan, anger melting off his face, and he smiles. Evan wonders if Connor has any idea how wonderful that smile can make someone feel. The guy could weaponize that sort of adoration-generating power.

“Evan Hansen,” Connor says. “Can I get your number?”

Evan feels a sudden and intense love for the D.C. metro system.


End file.
